Where Mayors mean most

How many civic leaders really move it and shake it for the sustainable city? Roger East sets aside urban envy to look for inspiration in Europe – and Polly Ghazi takes her pick of the pack across the Atlantic.

Elected executive mayors were once a rare breed in major First World cities outside of America. More recently the model has been catching on in Europe too. Not only that, but there are examples on both sides of the Atlantic that might encourage citizens to look to powerful civic leadership for a renaissance of urban hopes.

But even clean-ups and clampdowns are tough to deliver. So is it realistic for politicians to invoke the rekindling of pride and the return of mobility, to speak of stopping sprawl, of protecting nature and beauty, of restoring the downtown streets to the people – and the people to the streets? And can mayoral muscle drive real local regeneration – economic and social as well as environmental – hand in hand with the lofty ambition of competing in the ‘world cities’ league?

One logical place to look for leaders might be the European Sustainable Cities Awards. The criteria do mean, however, that cities are chosen for differing reasons – being well, doing better, trying harder. But among the score or so Sustainable City laureates since the scheme started, there’s a notable lack of really big cities.

There’ve been two UK winners; Leicester, which got the accolade in the first year (1996), and Norwich in 1999. Heidelberg’s done it twice, a unique triumph for the environmentally committed mayor Beate Weber. (She’s also a serial winner in direct elections, a long-established feature of urban government in southern Germany and extended to most other German towns in the 1990s.) The Stockholms, Munichs and Oslos crop up too, of course, and Barcelona – ah, Barcelona – but there’s no London, no Paris, no Berlin.

Paris, from the late 1970s onwards, was Europe’s prime example of a capital city with an elected mayor, enjoying an independence which allowed Jacques Chirac (in his pre-presidential days) to make the post his power base. It did him no harm, either, to be often at political odds with the (socialist) president Mitterrand. Not that he used his role in the cause of sustainability. For the past three years, however, Paris has had a mayor, the green-tinged socialist Bertrand Delanoë, who has dared to side with pedestrians, bikes and buses in the very citadel of the ungovernable motorist.

The city’s public transport, already (rightly) admired around the world, is progressively being extended with 14 new cross-town bus routes, new metro stations and tram routes into outlying areas. Yet vehicle pollution in hot summers has brought the city to choking point. Not only have emergency speed restrictions been deployed, and vehicles occasionally been banned on alternate days (by odd- or even-numbered licence plates), but a London-style congestion charge is under active consideration.

THE CARS THAT ATE PARIS

Delanoë has brought in bus lanes and more cycle lanes, and beefed up enforcement and fines for motorists who misuse them. He plans to go on increasing the road space for buses, bikes, rollerbladers and pedestrians, as well as creating more quartiers verts – green spaces for pedestrian use, and setting up a river bus on the Seine. And, along the river, closing a chunk of roadway to traffic for the peak holiday weeks in July and August, Delanoë has been getting sand shipped in.

The initiative has brought summer beach games, hammocks, music and happy people to a strip of the right bank of the Seine from the Louvre to the Ile Saint-Louis. It’s Paris Plage, touted as a chance for poor city kids to get to the beach, and it seems to have caught on. You still can’t swim in the Seine – the currents are too strong, officials say – but one day even that may not seem to be a bridge too far.

PET HATES

In the early 1800s Paris recycled and composted all of its human and animal waste. This employed 5,000 people and fertilised the heated beds and glasshouses of the market gardeners who fed the city’s inhabitants. Excess produce was even sold to London.

But now the heat is on to get dog owners to clean up after their pets, who leave four tonnes of filth a day on the public pavements. Plastic poop-scoop bags have started to appear in special distributors, marked with slogans and instructions, though it’s surely more attitude than ignorance that needs to be overcome.

Legacy of Olympic gold

The mayor of Athens, Dora Bakoyannis, a right-winger elected with a record majority in 2002, will this summer be the first woman mayor to host the Olympics. Sadly, though, the Games look increasingly unlikely to do everything she’d have hoped for the city, its image and its future. London, of course, is attaching great hopes to its own Olympic bid for 2012, with mayor Ken Livingstone enthusiastically promoting its case.

For environmental excellence, the standard the Athens Olympics will be measured against – and seek to surpass – is the Sydney Olympics four years ago. But for the combination of regeneration and public profile, putting itself on the map in the most positive way, it’s surely Barcelona that takes the biscuit. Barcelona’s legendary mayor Pasqual Maragall (1982-1997) seized on its successful bid for the 1992 Olympics to draw up a strategy that would transform the city into one of the most vibrant and prosperous in Europe.

Certainly this involved major infrastructure – improving the airport and the harbour, recovering land from the sea, developing two big railway stations, and connecting up the city with high-speed trains, buses and trams. In the process, the rehabilitation of the Ciutat Vella district, the city’s political, industrial and financial centre until the mid-19th century, became a model for integrated regeneration. A large-scale rebuilding programme, designed to reverse over a century of decline and dereliction, was meshed with local priorities as planners worked closely with neighbourhood-level community groups to tackle health, housing, social exclusion and drug and crime problems.

New businesses came in as the area was opened out with squares and green spaces, streets were pedestrianised and traffic tamed with high-tech management techniques. Maragall’s hallmark, carried on by his collaborator and successor Joan Clos, was combining urban renewal with a ‘citizen-friendly’ attitude. Cultural considerations came high on the list.

Now tourists flock to Barcelona’s mix of the old and the new, its distinctive Gaudi architecture and Miro sculptures, and the vibrant life of its streets. Clos talks of ‘acupuncture’ to describe how squares like the Cathedral Plaza have been opened up without damaging the integrity of the old walled city, and accepts that planners should leave lots of room for change in the future. Unlike “the traditional urban plan with everything planned for every space”, the pace of change in cities is too rapid to plan for everything, he says.

Today Maragall claims that the people of Barcelona equate the word ‘city’ with ‘betterment’. And Clos, now in his own third term of office, speaks in a similar vein, insisting on his vision of positive coexistence as the norm, civic spirit as the standard, and social cohesion as “a reality confirmed on a daily basis”. A city, above all, “where being happy is not a utopia”.

Quite a journey for a once declining industrial and manufacturing city. As a ‘world-class city of the 21st century’, terrible cliché though that may be, Barcelona’s future is tied in with the knowledge economy. Clos stresses strong public-private co-operation, and the importance of economic success so as to be able to deliver top-class services, welfare, cohesion and opportunities for all.

The city, he says, is the stage on which coexistence can flourish among diverse groups and people, and the place where their immediate problems are resolved and their welfare assured. It’s the best platform too, he says, for consolidating democracy (a common concern of the post-Franco era), because city governments are closest to the citizens – although mayors in Spain, notwithstanding their strong executive powers, are still elected by city councils rather than in a direct popular vote. Carrying forward the Olympic torch, as it were, Clos has high ambitions for a ‘second stage regeneration’ of Barcelona, the motor this time being the Universal Forum of Cultures.

This “celebration of world cultural diversity and urban sustainability” is expected to attract five million visitors between now and September, allowing Barcelona a showcase for sustainable development from pneumatic waste collection and recycling to transport management (including Europe’s longest urban road tunnel, to protect residents from noise and air pollution), low-emission technologies, energy efficiency and renewables – notably a massive photovoltaic roof.

EURO RULES OK?

Is this the dead hand of bureaucratic standardisation hovering over civic autonomy – or a way to empower our cities to get to grips with their own transport and environmental priorities? New EU Commission proposals envisage requiring each of Europe’s 500 largest municipalities to adopt a sustainable urban transport plan, and an environmental management plan backed by an environmental management system (EMS). Tripartite agreements between the EU, national and local authorities, says the Commission, might be one way of doing this – as part of a formal EU-wide urban environment strategy which it’s due to come up with by next summer.

A ‘strong’, but voluntary, EU framework would seek to turn existing examples of good practice into the ‘norm across Europe’. A norm of decentralised decision-making via popular participation – is that what it has in mind?

Sustainable heart of the American Midwest

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is a gritty industrial town. It may seem an unlikely place to foster a revolution in urban living. But thanks to John Norquist, its recently-departed mayor, the city has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance.

America’s longest serving mayor when he left office in January, Norquist spent his 15 years at the helm energetically pushing through an innovative, much admired programme of inner city revitalisation, pedestrian-friendly transport systems and green landscaping. To halt suburban sprawl and attract residents and businesses back to Milwaukee’s decaying inner city, Norquist pulled down a town centre superhighway, replacing it with dense, affordable housing. He also restored the old city street grid, which favoured local use rather than traffic speeding from suburb to suburb, and repealed building codes that restricted city centre zones to single use for businesses, shops or homes.

Encouraged by cuts in property taxes and a fast-track building permit system, developers transformed the inner city into vibrant multi-use neighbourhoods. Under Norquist’s leadership, Milwaukee has attracted $750 million of inner city investment and tens of thousands of new downtown residents, 17,000 of whom occupy flats in converted office buildings.

“Beautiful bridges, walkable neighbourhoods, street-friendly facades... the stuff of liveable cities.”

Perhaps most appealing to these new residents, Norquist built a three-mile green walkway along the Milwaukee River (now lined with bustling restaurants), introduced pedestrianisation schemes and built a new bridge, with cycle lanes and 14ft wide pavements, connecting the city centre with a densely populated residential neighbourhood. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had this to say about his achievements: “His imprint here will be felt in the form of beautiful bridges, a new generation of walkable neighbourhoods and street-friendly facades, and the un-building of an ugly freeway spur. That’s not fluff; it’s the stuff of liveable cities.”

Most impressively, from the point of view of other cash-strapped cities eyeing Milwaukee’s success, all this has been achieved without federal subsidies or emptying the city’s coffers. Instead, income lost through reduced property taxes has been more than compensated for by taxes paid by new residents. An early pioneer of smart growth, Norquist is now president of the Congress for the New Urbanism, whose mission is to promote anti-sprawl, urban regeneration and green building policies among civic leaders across the country. “I’ve seen the power that urban design has to reform neighbourhoods,” Norquist said on his appointment. “I’m delighted to (help) lead the effort to repair the damage done by sprawl to cities and countryside over the past 50 years.”

Pointers from Portland

Portland, Oregon, is a liberal, green-minded city with more than its share of citizen activists. Here it has not taken a charismatic mayor to turn things round, for the city council has long been a leading US exponent of urban sustainability. Its efforts to curb sprawl and protect farmland and open space began in the mid 1970s, with the institution of a “growth boundary” beyond which suburbs would not be able to expand.

Backing this up with a programme of downtown revitalisation, the city council has also been in the vanguard for the past 20 years on civic green building regulations, recycling and energy efficiency programs, pedestrian-friendly streets, efficient public transport and commuter bicycling routes. In another pioneering initiative, Portland’s Office of Sustainable Development has certified 400 residents as ‘master recyclers’ after giving them 30 hours of free training in waste prevention and re-use. Each has volunteered at least 30 hours of advice to local businesses or community groups on waste reduction.

Under the innovative BEST (Business for an Environmentally Sustainable Tomorrow) programme, Portland Energy Office staff broker a range of services provided by other organisations, including utility rebates and tax credits for introducing energy efficient measures, storm water drainage discounts, capital financing and technical assistance. One beneficiary of BEST, the local Red Lion Inns chain, now saves 12 million gallons of water a year thanks to the installation of reduced flow showerheads, taps and toilets.

Go tell it in the mountains

America’s burgeoning anti-sprawl movement has recently won some more surprising allies, in the form of the Republican governors of the picturesque mountain states of Vermont and Colorado. To the dismay of major developers and out-of-town retailers, they have embraced efforts to revitalise town centres, limit suburban spread and conserve farmland and natural landscapes. Governor Jim Douglas in Vermont has enthusiastically picked up the $23 million programme launched by predecessor Howard Dean to renovate historic buildings, construct affordable homes and revive urban parks in town centres across the state.

Douglas has also launched a Brownfields Programme, offering grants and credits to redevelop abandoned industrial sites, and an action plan to accelerate the cleanup of polluted Lake Champlain. Citizens’ Environmental Bonds have been issued to raise funds to help finance the cleanup operation. In the Rocky Mountain state of Colorado, governor Bill Owens has been pursuing a high profile Smart Growth Initiative since 1999.

Its purpose is to preserve farms and ranches, and prevent sprawl which would discourage tourists and disfigure stunning natural landscapes. Accordingly, he has refused to build new schools on suburban fringes, and ended the practice of ‘leapfrog’ development along minor country roads. Town centres have received $1.4m to spruce up heritage sites and he has introduced tax credits for developers who build low rent housing and develop urban industrial wasteland.

 
Urban Utopia?

9 June 2004

Polly Ghazi and Roger East